In the past years surveillance, especially visual surveillance systems, have entered our cities and streets on a large scale. In my hometown Frankfurt/Main, the city centre and traffic-hubs have become zones under intensive surveillance. Over 120 cameras are installed at the central station, over 2,000 at the airport. In such highly surveilled places it is impossible to remain unobserved. The extent of surveillance in the United Kingdom and the USA offers a glance into the future. In these countries visual surveillance systems have spread into the farthest corners of cities and villages and into the privacy of their inhabitants.
This development calls for artistic endeavours which examine the phenomenon and raise people’s awareness of CCTV. Subversive strategies have to be developed which counter the inherent power relations of surveillance systems and foster self-confident, active behaviour towards the instruments of control.
The ongoing artistic project, Contemporary Closed Circuits – Subversive Dialogues, examines practices of contemporary visual surveillance. The works explore possibilities of interaction with and subversion of systems of observation. Most of the works were produced during the past three years as an artistic final thesis at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.

On 15 August 2005, when the Republic of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Helsinki, Finland, it was considered yet another uncertain attempt at putting an end to Indonesia’s thirty years of conflict in its westernmost province, Aceh. After a historically unprecedented reconstruction process that followed the tsunami of December 2004 and two orderly elections in 2006/2007 and 2009, Aceh’s peace process is not only still on track, but widely considered a role model for ending protracted civil wars by means of political participation and autonomy regulations. This article reviews past developments that have led to the reconfiguration of Aceh’s political landscape and seeks to illustrate the most recent developments in GAM’s transformation from an independence movement to an Indonesian local political party.

Loggerhead Caretta caretta is now the only species of marine turtle nesting on the island of Sal, Cape Verde Islands. Since 2008, ADTMA - SOS Tartarugas has patrolled all the southern beaches of the island in order to protect nesting females and to collect nesting data. Although hunting is still a major issue, with 90 turtles killed in 2009, habitat loss and light pollution are becoming an ever more serious threat. Construction sites, hotels, apartment buildings and restaurants close to beaches, bright lights and illegal removal of sand are contributing to a marked decrease in the total number of nesting turtles on some beaches. In 2009, beaches on Sal experienced an average increase in nests of 200%, while the beach most affected by construction (Tortuga Beach) saw a decrease of nests of 7.3% (from 19.1% of total number of nests in 2008 to 11.8% in 2010). This beach also recorded a much lower nest to emergence ratio than normal (17.6% of emergences resulting in nests compared to 29.9% in other areas), indicating reluctance to nest due to light pollution and other disturbances.